


i can be your heart to let go

by GreenHerons



Series: heartlines [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Has a happy ending i promise, Immortality, The Flying Dutchman, hollstein as pirates, mentions of violence and drowning, the pirates on ghost ships have things that haunt them too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 03:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenHerons/pseuds/GreenHerons
Summary: “It’s a terrifying, murderous monster of the deep.”She swallows. It has been so long now that when she says “So am I.” it almost doesn’t hurt anymore. Her voice barely breaks (a hairline fracture instead of a chasm wide enough to fall into)(or: ten kinds of drowning Carmilla has learned )[Pirate AU]





	i can be your heart to let go

**Author's Note:**

> To quote a certain bio major ‘extended metaphor is a bad look’ yet here we are. This is dedicated to RunWithWolves who gave me some lovely advice when I sent her an ask about how much I struggle with publishing anything, because I always, always hate my work. She said put the thing out there anyway, so that’s what im doing with this fic. Comments are really, really appreciated

                                                         

_death is not the end._

_death is an ocean on all sides of our lives._

_deep and dark and cold, and anything but empty_.

– Joey Comeau, _A Softer World_

* * *

 

 

 **1.** **water**

 

Days starting with a half drowned man, in Carmilla’s experience, rarely end well.

A ripple of uneasy murmurs spread through the crew of the _Summer Valkyrie_ as she steps closer to the figures on the deck, heavy boots thudding across the planks. The sea wind swipes her hair across her face, blowing her long coat open like dark butterfly wings behind her. Exposing the brace of pistols at her waist and the scarlet sash that is the only streak of color on her. Black hair, black coat and black heart: she is a cursed shadow, a ghost.

Behind her, she hears a distinct click; Lawrence sliding back the hammer of her musket. She doesn’t need to look back to know that the barrel will be pointed at her, or that the hands of even those not brazen enough to audibly draw weapons will be reaching for cutlass hilts, or hovering above the flap of their holsters. She rolls her shoulders, amused. It’s laughable that they even think they even pose a threat.

Her smirk quickly twists into a grimace, however, as she notices the look on the face of the other captain.

“This had better be worth my while.”

 “Tell her what you told me. What you saw,” Captain Callis prods the man knelt at her feet: his face drawn in a deathly pallor and clothes soaked through.

The gaze directed up at her is wounded, fearful  “I—there was a fish, a giant fish” he breaks off, another deep cough racking his frame as he tries to expel the sea-water from his lungs “It swallowed the ship, and then there was this light, it lit up the whole ocean. I tried not to go into it, I tried but it was calling- it was hungry.”

“And a woman,” Carmilla interrupts “was there a woman there?”

“Yes, yes!” She steps back as he claws at the tail end of her coat, frenzied now “On the deck. She spoke some strange tongue, called it up from the deep-”

“Enough.” She turns back to Captain Callis again “Which ship did you rescue him from?”

“ _The General’s Revenge_.”

“Goddamnit. The same coast as _The Sarah Jane_?”

“Yes, just beyond Port Silas. No other survivors”

 “Ships sinking, strange storms, signs of old gods stirring…” Carmilla trails off, staring out across the water where the tide has peeled back to reveal a graveyard of once mighty vessels: masts sticking out of the frigid water like splintered finger bones and ice blooming into fractals across cracked hulls. These were sailors too, once. “...its all beginning again.”

“There’s more.”

“ _More_?”

“The rumours- they say the sorceress – Lilita- is looking for something. Maybe she has found it already, we do not know.”

 “And what exactly would this something be?”

Captain Callis swallows.

“Spit it out Callis,” Carmilla’s voice drops to nearly a snarl. “What. Is she looking. For.”

“The heart of Davy Jones.”

The captain reels back, _No_ ” she rasps, one hand flying out to the handrail to steady herself, the other snapping to grip the chain around her neck. A flash of something in her expression more broken than the any of the wrecks behind them “No, no it can’t be, I would have- you’re lying-.”

“That’s what I heard. Captain-”

“Call the other ships,” Carmilla manages, eyes closing as she curls her fingers tighter around the object hanging from the chain, like the burn of the cold metal is the last thing anchoring her to the world.  Steadying herself. “ _The Word, The Blood,_ _The Chalice._ We have to bring as many of the Brethren back together before it is too late. If she has the heart in her possession-”

“But what of the last? That ship –“

“-will not answer”

“But-“

“It will not answer. Only one thing can summon it.”

Mel frowns. She nods, “I’ll send for as many ships as I can.”

“Lock that man in the brig.” Then an afterthought, prompted by that voice in her head that always sounds like _hers_ “But first have your ship’s doctor see if there’s anything he can do.”

 (It would be odd perhaps to think of the man Carmilla leaves behind her as she walks away as lucky. He is still coughing up the ocean. But Carmilla has lived a very long time.)

(There are far crueller ways to drown than the water, she has learned)

 

 

 

* * *

 

**2.the past**

 

That night the crew fall asleep dreaming of sea fog, the tips of gull’s wings, pieces of eight. Carmilla lies awake, haunted by other kinds of silver: starlight and a knife’s glint and the laughter of two different girls she’s loved, she thinks it is a colour that will never thread either of their hair now; Laura will never have silver hair, Laura will never-

(Her tears taste like seawater and the laugh it drags from her is very hollow. For this was always how they kill the monsters in stories: with silver and salt.)

 

 

* * *

 

**3\. alcohol**

 

All winter, they say, the pirate ships have begun sailing north and not returned. None of the navy men or sailors who whisper of black flags glimpsed through the sea fog and keels carving through the water in a ghostly silence can fathom what is happening or can find an explanation. The vessels have simply taken like strange accursed birds on their frayed sailcloth wings and fled.

From the deck of her own ship _The Blood Fever_  - docked at La Isla Rechazada- Carmilla watches them emerge.

The near empty beach gradually becomes lit, small fires flickering to life along the black shore’s length and the growing noise of people moving about. Vessel by vessel laying anchor.

When _the Trident_ is sighted Carmilla immediately orders for the gleaming brigantine to be told to dock as far as possible from the crew of _the Summer Valkyrie_ but she can already see the two crews hurling insults at each other as soon they arrive. She sighs deeply, then goes to bet thirty coins on the probability of a brawl breaking out between Captain Callis and Captain Kirsch before the week is over. If she can’t prevent their idiotic rivalry, she might as well make some money out of it.  

More pirates appear over the next few weeks but Captain Armitage is the first Pirate Lord besides Carmilla herself, _The Dying Word_ pulling into port with a scorched mainsail. The reason for this becomes evident when she meets his new master gunner: a shock of fire coloured hair is not Lafontaine’s only connection to that element and another of their ‘experiments’ narrowly misses setting another sail aflame less than two days later after they are first introduced. Pyromaniac tendencies and slight scent of soot aside, however, Carmilla finds them intelligent and refreshingly candid (At very least, she likes their curiosity: for at moments it reminds her of another spirited pirate who wouldn’t stop asking questions.)  Certainly more tolerable than many of the other additions to J.P’s crew such as Lola Perry, the quartermaster whose mixture of maternal instincts, micromanaging and constant anxious tension Carmilla can almost feel her blood pressure increase in direct proximity to.

All in all the gathering of pirates is chaotic and after a month Carmilla is sure her eye is beginning to develop a permanent twitch.

Thankfully, she is spared from her increasingly murderous thoughts by _The Poisoner’s Chalice_ finally arriving. In spite of herself, Carmilla isn’t quite able to stop from rushing to the jetty, embarrassingly like an eager child, but then again the low, fond chuckle and a tight embrace that her sister greets her with suggest she’s been equally missed. 

Mattie is as herself as ever, the woman offloads a number of mysterious crates- one of which Carmilla swears _hisses_ when she lifts it- comments disparagingly on the décor, offers to murder the islands owner so they can remain as long as they like, and smoothly insults anyone in her vicinity.

-Including all of Kirsch’s crew (“A whole cargo of French wine? A year ago? I don’t remember stealing that so either it must have been a spectacularly pathetic fight you put up or you’re imagining the whole thing. On a completely different note, Carmilla darling would you care for some champagne?”) Danny Lawrence (“Forgive me, but if I had wanted a redwood blocking my light I’d have moved to the Americas. Get out.”) along with the every other sailor aboard the _Valkyrie_ (“Careful, this dress is worth more than that entire little tub of a toy boat of yours”) and practically everyone else (“Children, _children_. Allow me correct this illusion you seem to have developed that we’re holding a discussion. I’m giving you orders) In her presence, Carmilla feels the first real smile in what feels like forever creeping to her face.

 “It’s been a long while bella,”  Mattie says, taking her arm in hers as they saunter along the shoreline later that evening.

“Because someone was busy terrorising merchants off the Moroccan coast,” Carmilla returns.

“Oh terrorising is such a brutal word, I prefer to think of it as simply a more forceful variety of negotiation.”

Carmilla raises an eyebrow. “Involving gunfire and no quarter?”

“Is there any other enjoyable kind?” Mattie drawls and they share mirrored grins of dark amusement “So have you heard from-?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry little monster.” In spite of what Carmilla knows to be Mattie’s complicated feelings on the matter there is genuine consternation in her sister’s face and the look she sends her is nothing but sympathetic. Carmilla returns it with a grateful one before changing the subject

“You mentioned champagne?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 (They get roaringly drunk that night. It’s is not the worst way to drown, all things considered)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 **4.** **love**

 

_A dream, a memory:_

The storm has died down, leaving only a slight drizzle and the lingering tang of ozone. The whole ship quiet as everyone nurses their wounds; silently offering their thanks and prayers for their survival of yet another fight. Carmilla lies for minute listening to the soft grey murmur of rain outside her cabin, drinking in the quiet reassuring sound of Laura’s steady breathing like a balm. Each quiet exhale is proof she is safe, alive, ebbing away more of the residual terror and adrenaline of just over an hour ago still crawling through Carmilla’s veins.

She glances down at the other girl. The ship's doctor has dressed the wounds on Laura's side and put her in clean clothes, but there are still droplets of rain still glimmering in her hair. She’s still not fully conscious. Aside from the gash she received, three of her fingers got broken in the effort to save her. Carmilla wants to cry when she sees that, even bandaged, they are stretched towards her own.

She reaches over to link them together.

“Little fool,” the epithet comes out softer than she meant it to. Warm. She doesn’t want to think about why she can’t hurl names like insults at Laura anymore, why they all sound like endearments falling from her tongue. “Laura. You were supposed to stay safe. You were supposed to go back to your nice little life. Not come back and nearly get killed trying to save me.”

A groggy murmur.

“Sssh,” she whispers as she brushes damp curls from Laura’s face "you're fine." 

 and Laura turns to lean further into the touch and Carmilla's chest flutters and-

 

Oh.

 

_Oh._

 

(this is a way she thought she’d never drown again)

 

 

 

* * *

 

**5\. absence**

 

“I remember that,” the voice comes from her left, not in front of her. Carmilla turns away from the figure in the cabin towards it, towards the different girl, the same girl. Still a dream. An echo. If Carmilla reaches out, she knows, her hand would go straight through her. Everything hurts. “After that firefight right? I realised I was in love with you then too.”

 “You’re not here,” she says to the girl who used to be the sun but was swallowed by the sea and swallowed the sea back and became it, became tides and death and love. Carmilla’s chest aches as she speaks “You’re dead.”

 “So are you, doesn’t seem to be putting a dent in your social life.”

“Laura I-“

the girl just laughs and laughs and

 

-the dream changes-

 

(When she wakes up the room is empty

-and she drowns in that too)

 

 

* * *

 

**6\. choices [or the lack of]**

 

 “Alright. It started-”

“Oh, goodness, finally an explanation for all this…well…madness.”

“Uh I don’t think its going to make things seem less mad Perr. Probably worse.”

Carmilla ignores the two gingers, “It started with a sorceress, or some say a goddess. Whatever her real identity is it has been lost to time by now, muddied by a mix of legends. We only knew of her as Lilita Morgan, a sea witch.  Anyway centuries ago, a human named Hans Vordenburg, fell in love with her. She tasked him with guiding the spirits of the dead lost at sea, gifted him a ship and immortality for as long as he sailed her, at the cost that he could return to land only once every ten years. However after the first ten years he returned to find she wasn’t there. Convinced she had betrayed him, he cut out his heart and swore revenge.”

“Dramatic response. But what has this got to do with the Brethren?”

“I’m getting to it Gingersnap. Years later ships started going missing off the coast, Vordenburg- although by then he had done as many pirates do and changed his name to Davy Jones- came to us, the three Pirate Lords of that time with word that she was planning a spell, a sacrifice that would not only risk the pirates or the seas, but the world. He showed us how to limit her power by binding her to human form using four pieces of eight as talismans and a written oath sealed with both our blood and the blood of an anglerfish god. We called it the Brethren’s Charter. Four ships, four pirate captains, four pieces of eight.

“Well supposedly pieces of eight, being pirates we’re not highly inclined to hold on to coins so it was rather whichever things were on us at the time,” Mattie interjects.

“Yes. JP used a book, Mattie a locket, me a dagger. The spell worked. However by binding her in such a way, with the blood of a god, had…unexpected consequences.

“Consequences?”

“We gained certain abilities of our own. JP has an enhanced mind and… well prophetic is not quite the right word but he knows things he should not be able to. I can shapeshift and have strength and speed equalled to that of four men. Mattie that of ten, and she can travel through walls or from one place to another without having to physically move. And none of us can die. Being tied to an immortal being we are immortal as well. Cursed.”

“But now the binding is coming loose again?”

“Yes.”

“Then why isn’t Vordenburg or Davy Jones or whatever he’s called here as well, aiding us?”

“Because we unable to summon _The_ _Flying Dutchman._ It sails stranger tides than any person could track and it only answers to those who have died. Not to mention whomever has that heart controls Davy Jones, and therefore also controls the Dutchman, the most dangerous ghost ship on the seas, the kraken, and all of the dead. If Lilita is looking for the heart I’m not sure if calling the ship here would not put us in even more danger. The best we can hope is that it is somewhere safe, far from her and us.”

“So then we’re supposed to, what? Just risk all our lives in the meantime? hoping we can somehow figure out how to bind her with three?”

Carmilla breathes out. (The weight of the tide is pressing on her from all sides. Every direction. She is so tired of barely keeping her head above water.) “What other choice do we have?”

 “Wait,” Lafontaine pauses. “What was the fourth piece of eight?...”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

**7. oversized clothing**

 

Another memory:

The Laura in the cabin is younger: a teenager of soft doe eyes and earnest faith and limbs she hadn’t quite grown into. Just as brave. Not quite as sure. Under Carmilla’s scrutiny she tenses, an unsuccessful attempt to hide the shivers running through her frame.

 “Look. Here.” Carmilla holds out her longcoat with an aggravated sigh. “To help with the cold.”

Laura blinks.

“Come on, take it. I’ve not got all night sundance.”

When Laura merely continues staring, Carmilla sighs again and tugs the garment over Laura’s shoulders  herself. She quickly recoils at the slight spark that goes skittering through her fingertips where they brush the other girl’s cold skin. Pirates are always drawn to gold but Carmilla tries not to focus on the flecks of it in Laura’s eyes up this close, or the streaks in the the wispy strands escaping her braid.  Tries to ignore the way her coat hangs heavy around her small frame, too large, swallowing her wrists but yet somehow looks like it belongs on her. 

“Uh thank you?” Laura recovers her voice finally, stroking idle patterns along the slightly weathered hem.

“Don’t think on it. You’re irritating, but if you die of exposure we’d probably end up replacing you with someone even more scrawny. And besides I really don’t feel like looking for a new crewmate. Better the devil you know, as the saying goes.”

“Crewmate? But I thought you were dropping me off at the next port?”

“I’m – considering letting you remain on board for a little longer.”

“Oh my god. Thank you Car-Captain! I swear I’ll try not to mess up the coiling of ropes anymore and I’m actually really getting the hanging of the rigging, I’m just really grateful for the opportunity and I promise won’t let you dow-” 

“ _Considering_.”

Laura gets the hint, snapping her mouth shut, but the brightness doesn’t quite abate. Her gaze ducks down to her lap. The smile at her lips is a small thing; quiet, glowing. It’s the first time one of them has ever been directed at Carmilla. ( for a moment Carmilla understands the moon a little more, understands wanting to be where the sun is so much that you would pull the entire ocean along with you.)

 

* * *

 

**8.blood**

 

It was Lilita herself who buried her under the earth: the witch catching up with her somewhere in her second century “This is the coffin you will never need thanks to your little trick. Enjoy it,” She had sneered, over the sound of Carmilla’s bones snapping. Ell’s screaming.

“Im sorry,” Carmilla tries to say every time her nightmares turn crimson, every time the walls close into a grave, collapse back into this. “Please. I’m sorry.” she tries to apologise but her mouth won’t work, there is blood filling her lungs now, filling the room, the red is seeping everywhere -

 (Seventy years and all she remembers is the sick slick of blood down her throat, in her ears, her mouth. Nothing in the fourteen languages she speaks is even close to that feeling: drowning and drowning but being unable to die.)

(There are still days that she thinks this way is the worst)

 

* * *

 

 **9.** **the present**

 

Carmilla’s shadow falls across the heart of the world.

“I just don’t think it’s likely she’s there," Lafontaine argues, leaning over the map as well. The pair, along with three dozen or so other captains and first mates are gathered around a long table they’ve spread their charts across, weighing the corners down with apples, stones and books. Oceans and continents, the name of every river, every fault line radiating outwards from the center “If we could just use my compass-“

“The compass that points to what you want most? Useful. Except, oh yeah _we don’t have anyone who wants most to go to where Lilita is_. Build another that actually helps us, then we’ll talk.”

They glowered. “There isn’t time.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Well how about you-“

A loud crash draws their attention away, every head swivelling towards the entrance

The tallow candles stutter, the tattered fingers of light flickering as something slams against wood, jolting the walls. Muffled shouting.

Two dull thumps.

The door slamming open.

 

A figure strides past the now unconscious bodies of the pirates at the doorway and into the room, yanking the knife embedded in their shoulder out on the way. It clatters to the floor, an afterthought. Bloodless.

The longcoat is familiar. Black. A little too large on the newcomer’s frame. A silver chain glinting from under the collar.  

Carmilla’s smile drops away, along with the rest of the world beneath her. Her entire body freezes - 

“Sorry about the guards but I did try to warn them.” 

-And that voice, she knows that voice better than any sound in the world–

 “You,” she breathes as she rises to her feet. “You’re here.” Its heavy with rum and a quiet, stunned disbelief, she hears miles of distance and the rumbling of oceans in it. The ache of years.

 “Its my job remember? To ferry the souls of those who died at sea to the afterlife.” Even under the broad tricorn shadowing most of the other pirate’s face she can make out the slight trembling of a bottom lip, jaw clenching minutely “Sarah Jane, Elizabeth Spielsdorf, Natalie….did you really think I wouldn’t notice when the ships of some of the most well-known pirates in the Caribbean sank? I went to the wrecks myself”

“You…you saw them?”

“No. Far worse than that,” slender hands curl into fists, betraying the shaking kept from the captain’s voice. “It should be impossible but there was- I found the ships but their souls were just _gone_. There was nothing to collect.”

“ _Et Devorabit Omnia."_ Not gone” Carmilla says grimly “devoured.”

The silence following the words is sudden.

Absolute.

It drips down her spine like meltwater.

Finally, the other pirate exhales. “Well then I guess it’s lucky then, that you are no longer setting out all alone, without the backup of the fastest ship on the seas.”

“ _The Fever_ is faster with a following wind,” Carmilla grits out, irked. 

“So you claim Captain Karnstein.”

Carmilla’s expression darkens imperceptibly. "At least address me properly you scoundrel. Or have you forgotten?”

The tilt of a mouth upwards under the tricorn was discernible at that, lifting into the slightest smirk “Captain _Hollis_ -Karnstein, my apologies. And my congratulations on managing to marry so far above your station. Must be quite a lady to have managed to pull you from your womanising lifestyle.”

“Oh I don’t know, she’s rather too tightly wound at times. Talks your ear off” Is the dry response.

 “Oh really?! You’re the one who proposed in the middle of a sea battle. And there was a lot of rum involved later. The details are pretty hazy. I could hardly be blamed if I _had_ forgotten.”

And Carmilla Karnstein, Second Admiral of the Black, pirate captain, scourge of the seven seas, covers her face with her palms and groans ‘You’re killing me Hollis.”

 “Hollis- _Karnstein,_ ” The other captain echoes impishly “and you were already dead. I only-” the words die away abruptly, wry expression unravelling as Carmilla takes a stride closer.

Just one step away.

Slowly, tremulously, Carmilla reaches up and tilts her tricorn back.

It’s all the same; the slight freckles dusting her face, the fall of butterscotch hair, those soft, large eyes. It’s all the same and Carmilla drinks in the sight of like everything is new again, like it might be the last time.

 

Because it’s her.

 

Not an echo. Not a dream.

 

Her.

 

_Laura._

 

 “Carm,” Laura says, real and solid in front of her and Carmilla’s heart flickers like the stars going out.

She’s not sure who moves, then.

 One stride closes the remaining gap between them and then Laura’s in her arms and Carmilla is lifting her up and spinning her around and she hears the sharp, ragged intake of breath from the other girl, feels her collar growing damp but she doesn’t let go. The world disappearing around them. She’s distantly aware of the feeling of being shipwrecked right there in the middle of the room, as they grip onto each other so tightly  Carmilla’s heart is hammering through Laura's empty chest as if it’s her own. (She is dead, she is always dead, and she is always _hers_ , she will always love her like this: like salt water in a wound that never quite closed, the healing and the sting. Laura is always the one thing that makes her feel most alive, even if it hurts.)

“Laura, Laura, Laura,” Carmilla breathes, almost like a prayer, a litany against the other girls neck. “Laura she’s looking for the heart and you were - I thought I’d never- I thought-” she leans into her as a sob chokes its way out her chest; a small, broken splinter of a sound. 

 “Oh Carm” Laura whispers helplessly. “I’m safe, I’m alright, I promise.” They stay there for a few more moments until it feels less like she’s she going to fall apart if she lets go, then her wife pulls back slightly to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks, tuck a stray curl behind her ears.

“Uh…not to break up this clearly emotional reunion,” Lafontaine interrupts. Carmilla scowls over her shoulder because _they’re doing exactly that_ “But care to inform rest of us who in the seven hells you are?"

“Who I am?” Laura says stepping out of the embrace and swiping at her own damp face, that determination creeping back into the arch of her spine. She smiles, and theres something slightly deadly about the expression.

“Laura Hollis Karnstein at your service,” she dips into a bow “also known as Davy Jones, Captain of the Flying Dutchman. Sometimes called the Liar’s Heart. I heard something about a fishing trip?

 

 

* * *

 

**10\. choices ii.**

 

“-you said that the pieces of eight were a book, a locket, a dagger? What was the fourth?”

“ I told you Vordenburg’s cut out his heart, long before. That was what he used for his piece of eight. A once human heart given as a talisman to the charter. The heart of Davy Jones. The Liar’s Heart.”

“That’s…insane.”

“More insane than everything you’ve witnessed so far?”

“Fair point,” they concede.

“There’s other reason we can’t contact _The Flying Dutchman_ too, Vordenburg is no longer its captain. He was killed, just under ten years ago and a new captain lost a heart and took his place. That’s how it works…the dead must always have a guide, _The Dutchman_ must always have a captain, the spell must always have a heart.”

* * *

**11.**

 

“So, wife huh? Seems like there’s quite a story there.”

"Yes, and not one I’m inclined to share with insolent gingers,” Carmilla retorts, not taking her eyes from Laura as Lafontaine comes to stand at her shoulder.  The worn grain of the wheel of _The Blood Fever_ is rough and familiar under her palms and the stars are out. Music drifts up from the beach below- the crew of one of the ships, _The Hangman’s Glee_ used to be members of an orchestra before they turned to the black and with a little persuasion they’ve dusted off their instruments and struck up a lively jig.

Carmilla goes back to watching Laura. Relearning the things that are different and the same since she last saw her: she’s still small and lovely and so fierce, coming up with plans for the attack on Lilita more or less immediately. She still talks with her hands and her eyes seem to take in the brightness around them and magnify it, like sunlight on sea glass, the way they always did. She still does everything with her heart.  But there are small differences too: those eyes often become distant too now, as if clouded by unknown weather ( it carves something a little hollow in Carmilla’s chest, she doesn’t know these storms' names, or how to bring her back from them.)

The ring Carmilla gave her, hanging from a chain around Laura’s neck, gleams in the sunlight as her wife whirls around to call out at the ocean when the ship rocks ominously to the side.

 “Kenny! We talked about manners. No bumping friends’ pirate ships remember?”

Chastened, the gargantuan tentacle which had emerged from the water to wrap around _The Fever’s_  Hull withdraws and the shadowy mass retreats several meters back from the side of the ship. It remains there, water above it simmering and bubbling slightly. A few heads swing incredulously back and forth between them, visibly trying to decide what is more implausible: the fact that this tiny girl _scolded the Kraken_ or the fact that said Kraken appears to be _sulking._

“Its alright, its alright, he just liked the music!” Laura reassures the sailors. “Doesn’t know his own strength!”

“I like her.” Lafontaine offers, watching

 “Me too. I’m also not going to give in and spill the story of our entire romance just because you keep standing here.” Carmilla counters “Now, move before I eviscerate you.”

 They seem unperturbed by the threat “Fine then. Hollis!” They holler. “Come here a second!” 

“Hello Laf. What is it?”

“Hold this for me.”

"Alright?” Laura frowns down at the object in her hand “What’s with the old compass?”

“Experiment.”

“Well I think it’s broken?”

“No Hollis.” Lafontaine grins, devious “Its not broken at all.”

Laura’s eyes widen. She glances down again. At the compass in her hand. At the arrow that immediately turned once and then settled.

Pointing to Carmilla.

They get even wider when Carmilla wordlessly takes it from her. In her hands the needle turns to point straight at Laura. 

“Not broken,” Carmilla affirms.

An inkling of understanding creeps over Laura, along with a blush that reaches the tips of her ears and it takes everything in Carmilla not to lean over and kiss her right then and there in front of Laf

“That’s all the explanation I need actually,” Lafontaine says and still chortling, they walk away.

“You’re gonna tell me what that was about properly later, right?” Laura says, staring at their retreating back

“Sure.” Carmilla scowls suddenly when she makes out the lyrics of the next song being played

“Oh is someone not a fan of this shanty?” Laura begins to sing along knowingly, mischievous glint in her gaze _“Cursed were the crew of villains and knaves. Five lost to the hungry light, three to the waves –“_

“Please God. No,” Carmilla groans.

_“-the ninth fell for a lass and fancied her chances. But she thought her a monster and spurned her advances. And the rest of em’ gone on victuals and vices O Love O! cruel as the sea to them it entices-_

_“_ Laura I swear to God-“

 _“-Oh love will have its sacrifices,”_ Laura finishes with a silly flourish, lifting Carmilla’s arm and spinning under it as if concluding a dance. “So. Are all these songs or legends somehow related to you, or is it just most of them?”

“I’m three hundred years old, its inevitable you pick up some myths along the way, they’re like barnacles in that respect.”

“Huh. Maybe they’ll write a song about me someday then.”

A snort “I’d love to see that.”

“And just for that I’m gonna commission one. What are you doing anyway?”

“Watching the ocean.” _And you_

 “It looks like a mirror when it’s like this,” Laura notes.  

Carmilla frowns, sombre again “It is always a mirror. That’s the real cruelty of the sea, it reflects and it reflects but it gives nothing back except yourself. It is the depths of themselves men go mad looking into, not the water. Seeing things they want but can’t reach.”

“Such a philosopher,” Laura chuckles, before she bites her lip, struck by a thought. “Did you?”

“What?”

“Go mad?”

“For a while.”

“What did you see?” She asks quietly

“At first? Freedom.  An escape. But then the curse happened. I was a pirate for such a long time, all those years, full of greed and violence. It- twists things. And after while I would look into it and all I would see was death. Blood in the water.” Carmilla takes a steadying breath "Like I said, mad for a while.”

“Carm-“

“Until this prissy, scruffy little stowaway who I was totally planning on leaving in the next port we docked at,” her voice grows warm “unravelled all of my plans. Because she thought we all deserved better and then I saw it. What I really left to find”

“What?"

“A home. When you were next to me, the sea looked like home.”

There is a tug at her collar then, and Laura is pulling her down and kissing her deeply, her fingers twisting into her hair. It leaves something more ancient than salt or stardust singing in her veins when she finally pulls away.

“ I’ve wanted to do that all day,” Laura breathes, still gripping her collar. Somehow they’ve ended up backed against the door.

“Why didn’t you?” Murmurs Carmilla, breathless. 

“There were people around Carm. I have to keep some kind of tough reputation with my crew”

“After they saw us hugging and crying?”

“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s the early morning: hazy gold and ghostlike. Laura is curled into her side. She’s smiling faintly as she dreams, hair tangled, the blue sheets creased around her like the sea and she might be the most beautiful messy sleeper Carmilla’s ever seen; she wants to go everywhere with her, she never wants to move from this spot again, she wants to do foolish, impossible things like buy an island and live far away from the world that keeps trying to hurt them.  Far from legends and shipwrecks, from swordfights and black flags and _the Dutchman must always have a captain._ Somewhere where it never matters that they have one heart and over three hundred collective centuries between them. Where its just the two of them in love.

She presses soft kisses to Laura’s shoulder, and then as she stirs, with aching tenderness just over her heart where the jagged scar rests. Brown eyes watch her, hazy with sleep and warm with love “Hey.” 

“Carm. Hey,”  Laura murmurs, tucking tighter against her. She is drifting back to sleep again when a sudden glimpse of orange in the periphery of her vision has her startling alert.

 “Laura,” She groans "that accursed crab of yours is watching me.”

“Yeah _well_ whose undead monkey walked in on us yesterday?”

“Lawrence.”

“What?”

“We named the monkey Lawrence.”

“Carm!” Laura struggles for a second with the effort of sounding reproachful before she gives up and dissolves into giggles and _that’s_ just so irresistibly endearing that Carmilla has to lean down and kiss her again, this time on the mouth.

“Speaking of names, please tell me I imagined you referring to the kraken as _Kenny_ yesterday?”

“He’s a sweetheart.”

“It’s a terrifying, murderous monster of the deep.”

 “So am I,” It has been so long now that when she says it almost doesn’t hurt anymore. Her voice barely breaks (a hairline fracture instead of a chasm wide enough to fall into)

“Laura-"

 “-I don’t blame you, you know. You did what you could,” she whispers.

 “You should. I tied you to the Dutchman, doomed you to all of this because I couldn’t bear to lose you- because I-" _Maybe even before that_ , she doesn't add, _by loving you so much that it shone out of my eyes where anyone could see it and turn it into a weapon_ “Gods - _you lost your heart_ Laura. You should hate me.” 

“No, no, Carm no. I didn’t lose it. It’s right here. Always has been.” Laura shakes her head. “You’re my heart,” she says fiercely, fingers curling into Carmilla's collar “You’re my heart” and it’s so sure, a certainty so unwavering Carmilla thinks ships could wreck themselves upon it. Like its an immovable truth.

“You’re my home,” Carmilla whispers back. Echoing her words from earlier as she tugs Laura tighter against her chest.  Runs a hand across her back.

And that's all it takes for Laura pull her back in and kiss her again. And Carmilla is lost in her, in Laura and her warmth and the feel of her mouth and her hands skimming her spine and tracing across her ribs through her shirt like she’s trying to map everything and memorise it and-

(Kissing Laura feels like coming up for air.)

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ships:  
> (The Word) The Dying Word - J.P Armitage  
> (The Blood) The Blood Fever- Carmilla Karnstein  
> (The Chalice) The Poisoner’s Chalice -Matska Belmonde  
> (The Liar’s Heart) The Flying Dutchman - Laura Hollis aka. Davy Jones  
> The Trident -Wilson Kirsch & Zetas  
> The Hangman’s Glee -Silas Glee Club  
> Summer Valkyries -Danny Lawrence, Melanippe Callis & Summer Society
> 
> [ my tumblr is: howmanygreenherons.tumblr.com ]


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